FascismFascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical authoritarian
nationalism,[1][2] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible
suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce,[3]
which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.[4] The first
fascist movements emerged in Italy during
World War IWorld War I before it spread
to other European countries.[4] Opposed to liberalism,
MarxismMarxism and
anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the
traditional left–right spectrum.[5][6][7][4][8][9]
Fascists saw
World War IWorld War I as a revolution that brought massive changes
to the nature of war, society, the state and technology. The advent of
total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down
the distinction between civilians and combatants. A "military
citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the
military in some manner during the war.[10][11] The war had resulted
in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of
people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production
and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented
authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.[10][11]
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and they regard
the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party
state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to
respond effectively to economic difficulties.[12] Such a state is led
by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government
composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge
national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.[12] Fascism
rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature
and views political violence, war and imperialism as means that can
achieve national rejuvenation.[13][14][15][16] Fascists advocate a
mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through
protectionist and interventionist economic policies.[17]
Since the end of
World War IIWorld War II in 1945, few parties have openly
described themselves as fascist and the term is instead now usually
used pejoratively by political opponents. The descriptions neo-fascist
or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe
parties of the far-right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in,
20th century fascist movements.[4][18]

Etymology
The Italian term fascismo is derived from fascio meaning a bundle of
rods, ultimately from the Latin word fasces.[19] This was the name
given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups
similar to guilds or syndicates. According to Mussolini's own account,
the
Fascist Revolutionary Party (Partito Fascista Rivoluzionario or
PFR) was founded in Italy in 1915.[20] In 1919,
MussoliniMussolini founded the
Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, which became the Partito
Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) two years later. The
Fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces or
fascio littorio[21]—a bundle of rods tied around an axe,[22] an
ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate[23]
carried by his lictors, which could be used for corporal and capital
punishment at his command.[24][25]
The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single
rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.[26]
Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements: for
example, the
FalangeFalange symbol is five arrows joined together by a
yoke.[27]
Definitions
Main article: Definitions of fascism
Historians, political scientists and other scholars have long debated
the exact nature of fascism.[28] Each interpretation of fascism is
distinct, leaving many definitions too wide or narrow.[29][30]
One common definition of the term focuses on three concepts: the
fascist negations (anti-liberalism, anti-communism and
anti-conservatism); nationalist authoritarian goals of creating a
regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a
modern, self-determined culture; and a political aesthetic of romantic
symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence and
promotion of masculinity, youth and charismatic
leadership.[31][32][33] According to many scholars,
fascism—especially once in power—has historically attacked
communism, conservatism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting
support primarily from the far-right.[34]
Roger GriffinRoger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology
whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form
of populist ultranationalism".[35] Griffin describes the ideology as
having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist
ultra-nationalism and (iii) the myth of decadence".[36]
FascismFascism is "a
genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the
last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range
of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war
period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed
party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising
radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.[37]
Robert Paxton says that fascism is "a form of political behavior
marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation,
or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity,
in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants,
working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites,
abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and
without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and
external expansion".[38]
Umberto Eco,[39] Kevin Passmore,[40] John Weiss,[41] Ian Adams[42] and
Moyra Grant[43] mention racism as a characteristic component of
fascism, e.g. how the fascistic dictator
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler idealized German
society as a racially unified and hierarchically organized
VolksgemeinschaftVolksgemeinschaft construct. Fascist philosophies vary by application,
but remain distinct by one theoretic commonality. All traditionally
fall into the far-right sector of any political spectrum, catalyzed by
afflicted class identities over conventional social inequities.[44]
John Lukacs, Hungarian-American historian and
HolocaustHolocaust survivor,
argues that there is no such thing as generic fascism. He claims that
National SocialismNational Socialism and communism are essentially manifestations of
populism and that states such as National Socialist Germany and
Fascist Italy are more different than similar.[45]
Position in the political spectrum
Most scholars place fascism on the far right of the political
spectrum.[5][6][7][4][8][9] Such scholarship focuses on its social
conservatism and its authoritarian means of opposing
egalitarianism.[46][47] Roderick Stackelberg places
fascism—including Nazism, which he says is "a radical variant of
fascism"—on the political right by explaining: "The more a person
deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition,
the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The
more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even
desirable, the further to the right he or she will be".[48]
Fascism's origins, however, are complex and include many seemingly
contradictory viewpoints, ultimately centered around a myth of
national rebirth from decadence.[49]
FascismFascism was founded during World
WarWar I by Italian national syndicalists who drew upon both left-wing
organizational tactics and right-wing political views.[citation
needed]
Italian FascismItalian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.[50][51] A
major element of fascist ideology that has been deemed to be far-right
is its stated goal to promote the right of a supposedly superior
people to dominate, while purging society of supposedly inferior
elements.[52]
In the 1920s the Italian Fascists described their ideology as
right-wing in the political program The Doctrine of Fascism, stating:
"We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a
century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century".[53][54] Mussolini
stated that fascism's position on the political spectrum was not a
serious issue for fascists: "Fascism, sitting on the right, could also
have sat on the mountain of the center ... These words in any
case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning: they do have a
variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don't give a damn
about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are
terrorized by these words".[55]
Major Italian groups politically on the right, especially rich
landowners and big business, feared uprising by groups on the left
such as sharecroppers and labour unions.[56] They welcomed
FascismFascism and
supported its violent suppression of opponents on the left.[57] The
accommodation of the political right into the Italian Fascist movement
in the early 1920s created internal factions within the movement. The
"Fascist left" included Michele Bianchi, Giuseppe Bottai, Angelo
Oliviero Olivetti,
Sergio Panunzio and Edmondo Rossoni, who were
committed to advancing national syndicalism as a replacement for
parliamentary liberalism in order to modernize the economy and advance
the interests of workers and common people.[58] The "Fascist right"
included members of the paramilitary Squadristi and former members of
the
Italian Nationalist Association (ANI).[58] The Squadristi wanted
to establish
FascismFascism as a complete dictatorship, while the former ANI
members, including Alfredo Rocco, sought to institute an authoritarian
corporatist state to replace the liberal state in Italy while
retaining the existing elites.[58] Upon accommodating the political
right, there arose a group of monarchist fascists who sought to use
fascism to create an absolute monarchy under King Victor Emmanuel III
of Italy.[58]
After King Victor Emmanuel III forced
MussoliniMussolini to resign as head of
government and placed him under arrest in 1943,
MussoliniMussolini was rescued
by German forces. While continuing to rely on Germany for support,
MussoliniMussolini and the remaining loyal Fascists founded the Italian Social
Republic with
MussoliniMussolini as head of state.
MussoliniMussolini sought to
re-radicalize Italian Fascism, declaring that the Fascist state had
been overthrown because
Italian FascismItalian Fascism had been subverted by Italian
conservatives and the bourgeoisie.[59] Then the new Fascist government
proposed the creation of workers' councils and profit-sharing in
industry, although the German authorities, who effectively controlled
northern Italy at this point, ignored these measures and did not seek
to enforce them.[59]
A number of post-
World War IIWorld War II fascist movements described themselves
as a "third position" outside the traditional political spectrum.[60]
Spanish Falangist leader
José Antonio Primo de RiveraJosé Antonio Primo de Rivera said:
"[B]asically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic
structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt
to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof
would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile".[61]
"Fascist" as a pejorative
Main article: Fascist (insult)
Following the defeat of the
Axis PowersAxis Powers in World
WarWar II, the term
"fascist" has been used as a pejorative,[62] often referring to widely
varying movements across the political spectrum.[63] George Orwell
wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely
meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as
a synonym for 'Fascist'".[63]
Contrary to the popular use of the term, communist states have
sometimes been referred to as "fascist", typically as an insult. For
example, Marxist interpretations of the term have been applied in
relation to
CubaCuba under
Fidel CastroFidel Castro and
VietnamVietnam under Ho Chi Minh.[64]
Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union during the
Sino-Soviet SplitSino-Soviet Split and likewise the Soviets used the term to denounce
Chinese Marxists[65] and social democracy (coining a new term in
social fascism).
In the United States, Herbert Matthews of the
New York TimesNew York Times asked in
1946: "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as
Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?".[66] J. Edgar
Hoover, longtime
FBIFBI director and ardent anti-communist, wrote
extensively of "Red Fascism".[67]
Professor Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales[68] wrote in
2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our
times".[30] "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-World
WarWar II
organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term
"neo-fascist".[69]
History
Further information:
FascismFascism and ideology
Nineteenth century roots
According to
Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica the roots of fascism are either
tied to the Jacobin movement or a 19th-century backlash against the
Enlightenment.[70] Historians such as Irene Collins and Howard C Payne
see Napoleon III, who ran a 'police state' and suppressed the media,
as a forerunner of fascism.[71] According to David Thomson
(historian)[72], the Italian
RisorgimentoRisorgimento of 1871 led to the 'nemesis
of fascism'. William L Shirer[73] sees a continuity from the views of
FichteFichte and Hegel, through Bismarck, to Hitler;
Robert GerwarthRobert Gerwarth speaks
of a 'direct line' from Bismarck to Hitler.[74] Julian Dierkes sees
fascism as a 'particularly violent form of Imperialism'.[75]
Fin de siècleFin de siècle era and the fusion of Maurrasism with Sorelianism
(1880–1914)
The historian
Zeev SternhellZeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of
fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the fin de siècle
theme of that time.[76][77] The theme was based on a revolt against
materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society and
democracy.[78] The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism,
irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism.[79] The fin-de-siècle
mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive
and total solution.[78] The fin-de-siècle intellectual school
considered the individual only one part of the larger collectivity,
which should not be viewed as an atomized numerical sum of
individuals.[78] They condemned the rationalistic individualism of
liberal society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois
society.[78]
The fin-de-siècle outlook was influenced by various intellectual
developments, including Darwinian biology; Wagnerian aesthetics;
Arthur de Gobineau's racialism; Gustave Le Bon's psychology; and the
philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche,
Fyodor DostoyevskyFyodor Dostoyevsky and Henri
Bergson.[80] Social Darwinism, which gained widespread acceptance,
made no distinction between physical and social life, and viewed the
human condition as being an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival
of the fittest.[80] Social
DarwinismDarwinism challenged positivism's claim of
deliberate and rational choice as the determining behaviour of humans,
with social
DarwinismDarwinism focusing on heredity, race, and environment.[80]
Social Darwinism's emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of
organic relations within societies fostered legitimacy and appeal for
nationalism.[81] New theories of social and political psychology also
rejected the notion of human behaviour being governed by rational
choice and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in
political issues than reason.[80] Nietzsche's argument that "God is
dead" coincided with his attack on the "herd mentality" of
Christianity, democracy and modern collectivism; his concept of the
übermensch; and his advocacy of the will to power as a primordial
instinct, were major influences upon many of the fin-de-siècle
generation.[82] Bergson's claim of the existence of an "élan vital"
or vital instinct centred upon free choice and rejected the processes
of materialism and determinism; this challenged Marxism.[83]
Gaetano MoscaGaetano Mosca in his work The Ruling Class (1896) developed the theory
that claims that in all societies an "organized minority" will
dominate and rule over the "disorganized majority".[84][85] Mosca
claims that there are only two classes in society, "the governing"
(the organized minority) and "the governed" (the disorganized
majority).[86] He claims that the organized nature of the organized
minority makes it irresistible to any individual of the disorganized
majority.[86]
The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin's concept of propaganda of the deed,
which stressed the importance of direct action as the primary means of
politics, including revolutionary violence, became popular among
fascists who admired the concept and adopted it as a part of
fascism.[87]

Charles Maurras

Georges Sorel

French nationalist and reactionary monarchist Charles Maurras
influenced fascism.[88] Maurras promoted what he called integral
nationalism, which called for the organic unity of a nation and
Maurras insisted that a powerful monarch was an ideal leader of a
nation. Maurras distrusted what he considered the democratic
mystification of the popular will that created an impersonal
collective subject.[88] He claimed that a powerful monarch was a
personified sovereign who could exercise authority to unite a nation's
people.[88] Maurras' integral nationalism was idealized by fascists,
but modified into a modernized revolutionary form that was devoid of
Maurras' monarchism.[88]
French revolutionary syndicalist
Georges SorelGeorges Sorel promoted the legitimacy
of political violence in his work
Reflections on ViolenceReflections on Violence (1908) and
other works in which he advocated radical syndicalist action to
achieve a revolution to overthrow capitalism and the bourgeoisie
through a general strike.[89] In Reflections on Violence, Sorel
emphasized need for a revolutionary political religion.[90] Also in
his work The Illusions of Progress, Sorel denounced democracy as
reactionary, saying "nothing is more aristocratic than democracy".[91]
By 1909 after the failure of a syndicalist general strike in France,
Sorel and his supporters left the radical left and went to the radical
right, where they sought to merge militant Catholicism and French
patriotism with their views—advocating anti-republican Christian
French patriots as ideal revolutionaries.[92] Initially Sorel had
officially been a revisionist of Marxism, but by 1910 announced his
abandonment of socialist literature and claimed in 1914, using an
aphorism of
Benedetto CroceBenedetto Croce that "socialism is dead" because of the
"decomposition of Marxism".[93] Sorel became a supporter of
reactionary Maurrassian nationalism beginning in 1909 that influenced
his works.[93] Maurras held interest in merging his nationalist ideals
with Sorelian syndicalism as a means to confront democracy.[94]
Maurras stated "a socialism liberated from the democratic and
cosmopolitan element fits nationalism well as a well made glove fits a
beautiful hand".[95]

Enrico Corradini

The fusion of Maurrassian nationalism and Sorelian syndicalism
influenced radical Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini.[96] Corradini
spoke of the need for a nationalist-syndicalist movement, led by
elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary
syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to
fight.[96] Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "proletarian nation"
that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the
"plutocratic" French and British.[97] Corradini's views were part of a
wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist
Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy's economic backwardness
was caused by corruption in its political class, liberalism, and
division caused by "ignoble socialism".[97] The ANI held ties and
influence among conservatives, Catholics and the business
community.[97] Italian national syndicalists held a common set of
principles: the rejection of bourgeois values, democracy, liberalism,
Marxism, internationalism and pacifism; and the promotion of heroism,
vitalism and violence.[98] The ANI claimed that liberal democracy was
no longer compatible with the modern world, and advocated a strong
state and imperialism, claiming that humans are naturally predatory
and that nations were in a constant struggle, in which only the
strongest could survive.[99]

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian modernist author of the Futurist
Manifesto (1909) and later the co-author of the Fascist Manifesto
(1919)

FuturismFuturism was both an artistic-cultural movement and initially a
political movement in Italy led by
Filippo Tommaso MarinettiFilippo Tommaso Marinetti who
founded the
Futurist ManifestoFuturist Manifesto (1908), that championed the causes of
modernism, action, and political violence as necessary elements of
politics while denouncing liberalism and parliamentary politics.
Marinetti rejected conventional democracy based on majority rule and
egalitarianism, for a new form of democracy, promoting what he
described in his work "The Futurist Conception of Democracy" as the
following: "We are therefore able to give the directions to create and
to dismantle to numbers, to quantity, to the mass, for with us number,
quantity and mass will never be—as they are in Germany and
Russia—the number, quantity and mass of mediocre men, incapable and
indecisive".[100]
FuturismFuturism influenced fascism in its emphasis on recognizing the virile
nature of violent action and war as being necessities of modern
civilization.[101] Marinetti promoted the need of physical training of
young men, saying that in male education, gymnastics should take
precedence over books, and he advocated segregation of the genders on
this matter, in that womanly sensibility must not enter men's
education whom Marinetti claimed must be "lively, bellicose, muscular
and violently dynamic".[102]
World War IWorld War I and its aftermath (1914–1929)

Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini (here in 1917 as a soldier in World
WarWar I), who in
1914 founded and led the
Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria to promote the
Italian intervention in the war as a revolutionary nationalist action
to liberate Italian-claimed lands from Austria-Hungary

At the outbreak of
World War IWorld War I in August 1914, the Italian political
left became severely split over its position on the war. The Italian
Socialist Party (PSI) opposed the war but a number of Italian
revolutionary syndicalists supported war against Germany and
Austria-
HungaryHungary on the grounds that their reactionary regimes had to
be defeated to ensure the success of socialism.[103] Angelo Oliviero
Olivetti formed a pro-interventionist fascio called the
Fasci of
International Action in October 1914.[103]
Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini upon being
expelled from his position as chief editor of the PSI's newspaper
Avanti! for his anti-German stance, joined the interventionist cause
in a separate fascio.[104] The term "Fascism" was first used in 1915
by members of Mussolini's movement, the
Fasci of Revolutionary
Action.[105]
The first meeting of the
Fasci of Revolutionary Action was held on 24
January 1915[106] when
MussoliniMussolini declared that it was necessary for
Europe to resolve its national problems—including national
borders—of Italy and elsewhere "for the ideals of justice and
liberty for which oppressed peoples must acquire the right to belong
to those national communities from which they descended".[106]
Attempts to hold mass meetings were ineffective and the organization
was regularly harassed by government authorities and socialists.[107]

German soldiers being cheered in Lübeck during their advance to the
front lines in 1914 during World
WarWar I, as the concept of the "Spirit
of 1914" by
Johann Plenge identified the outbreak of war as forging
national solidarity of Germans

Similar political ideas arose in Germany after the outbreak of the
war. German sociologist
Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a "National
Socialism" in Germany within what he termed the "ideas of 1914" that
were a declaration of war against the "ideas of 1789" (the French
Revolution).[108] According to Plenge, the "ideas of 1789" that
included rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism were
being rejected in favor of "the ideas of 1914" that included "German
values" of duty, discipline, law and order.[108] Plenge believed that
racial solidarity (Volksgemeinschaft) would replace class division and
that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in
the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist"
Britain.[108] He believed that the "
SpiritSpirit of 1914" manifested itself
in the concept of the "People's League of National Socialism".[109]
This
National SocialismNational Socialism was a form of state socialism that rejected
the "idea of boundless freedom" and promoted an economy that would
serve the whole of Germany under the leadership of the state.[109]
This
National SocialismNational Socialism was opposed to capitalism because of the
components that were against "the national interest" of Germany, but
insisted that
National SocialismNational Socialism would strive for greater efficiency
in the economy.[109][110] Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational
ruling elite to develop
National SocialismNational Socialism through a hierarchical
technocratic state.[111]
Impact of World
WarWar I
Fascists viewed
World War IWorld War I as bringing revolutionary changes in the
nature of war, society, the state and technology, as the advent of
total war and mass mobilization had broken down the distinction
between civilian and combatant, as civilians had become a critical
part in economic production for the war effort and thus arose a
"military citizenship" in which all citizens were involved to the
military in some manner during the war.[10][11]
World War IWorld War I had
resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing
millions of people to serve on the front lines or provide economic
production and logistics to support those on the front lines, as well
as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of
citizens.[10][11] Fascists viewed technological developments of
weaponry and the state's total mobilization of its population in the
war as symbolizing the beginning of a new era fusing state power with
mass politics, technology and particularly the mobilizing myth that
they contended had triumphed over the myth of progress and the era of
liberalism.[10]

Members of Italy's
ArditiArditi corps (here in 1918 holding daggers, a
symbol of their group), which was formed in 1917 as groups of soldiers
trained for dangerous missions, refusal to surrender and willingness
to fight to the death and whose black uniform and was adopted by the
Italian Fascist movement adopted in homage to the Arditi

Impact of the
BolshevikBolshevik Revolution
The October
RevolutionRevolution of 1917—in which
BolshevikBolshevik communists led by
Vladimir LeninVladimir Lenin seized power in Russia—greatly influenced the
development of fascism.[112] In 1917, Mussolini, as leader of the
Fasci of Revolutionary Action, praised the October Revolution, but
later he became unimpressed with Lenin, regarding him as merely a new
version of Tsar Nicholas.[113] After World
WarWar I, fascists have
commonly campaigned on anti-Marxist agendas.[112]
Liberal opponents of both fascism and the Bolsheviks argue that there
are various similarities between the two, including that they believed
in the necessity of a vanguard leadership, had disdain for bourgeois
values and it is argued had totalitarian ambitions.[112] In practice,
both have commonly emphasized revolutionary action, proletarian nation
theories, one-party states and party-armies.[112] However, both draw
clear distinctions from each other both in aims and tactics, with the
Bolsheviks emphasizing the need for an organized participatory
democracy and an egalitarian, internationalist vision for society
while the fascists emphasize hyper-nationalism and open hostility
towards democracy, envisioning a hierarchical social structure as
essential to their aims.
With the antagonism between anti-interventionist Marxists and
pro-interventionist Fascists complete by the end of the war, the two
sides became irreconcilable. The Fascists presented themselves as
anti-Marxists and as opposed to the Marxists.[114] Mussolini
consolidated control over the Fascist movement in 1919 with the
founding of the
Fasci italiani di combattimento.
The
Fascist ManifestoFascist Manifesto of 1919
In 1919,
Alceste De AmbrisAlceste De Ambris and Futurist movement leader Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti created The Manifesto of the Italian
Fasci of Combat
(the Fascist Manifesto).[115] The Manifesto was presented on 6 June
1919 in the Fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia. The Manifesto
supported the creation of universal suffrage for both men and women
(the latter being realized only partly in late 1925, with all
opposition parties banned or disbanded);[116] proportional
representation on a regional basis; government representation through
a corporatist system of "National Councils" of experts, selected from
professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold
legislative power over their respective areas, including labour,
industry, transportation, public health, communications, etc.; and the
abolition of the Italian Senate.[117] The Manifesto supported the
creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage,
worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in
labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants,
reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law
on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to
55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property
of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics and revision
of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of
their[who?] profits.[118] It also called for the creation of a
short-service national militia to serve defensive duties,
nationalization of the armaments industry and a foreign policy
designed to be peaceful but also competitive.[119]

Residents of Fiume cheer the arrival of
Gabriele d'AnnunzioGabriele d'Annunzio and his
blackshirt-wearing nationalist raiders, as D'Annunzio and Fascist
Alceste De AmbrisAlceste De Ambris developed the quasi-fascist Italian Regency of
Carnaro (a city-state in Fiume) from 1919 to 1920 and whose actions by
D'Annunzio in Fiume inspired the Italian Fascist movement

The next events that influenced the Fascists in Italy was the raid of
Fiume by Italian nationalist
Gabriele d'AnnunzioGabriele d'Annunzio and the founding of
the
Charter of CarnaroCharter of Carnaro in 1920.[120] D'Annunzio and De Ambris designed
the Charter, which advocated national-syndicalist corporatist
productionism alongside D'Annunzio's political views.[121] Many
Fascists saw the
Charter of CarnaroCharter of Carnaro as an ideal constitution for a
Fascist Italy.[122] This behaviour of aggression towards Yugoslavia
and
South SlavsSouth Slavs was pursued by Italian Fascists with their persecution
of South Slavs—especially Slovenes and Croats.
Italian Fascists in 1920
In 1920, militant strike activity by industrial workers reached its
peak in Italy and 1919 and 1920 were known as the "Red Years".[123]
MussoliniMussolini and the Fascists took advantage of the situation by allying
with industrial businesses and attacking workers and peasants in the
name of preserving order and internal peace in Italy.[124]
Fascists identified their primary opponents as the majority of
socialists on the left who had opposed intervention in World War
I.[122] The Fascists and the Italian political right held common
ground: both held
MarxismMarxism in contempt, discounted class consciousness
and believed in the rule of elites.[125] The Fascists assisted the
anti-socialist campaign by allying with the other parties and the
conservative right in a mutual effort to destroy the Italian Socialist
Party and labour organizations committed to class identity above
national identity.[125]
FascismFascism sought to accommodate Italian conservatives by making major
alterations to its political agenda—abandoning its previous
populism, republicanism and anticlericalism, adopting policies in
support of free enterprise and accepting the
Roman Catholic ChurchRoman Catholic Church and
the monarchy as institutions in Italy.[126] To appeal to Italian
conservatives,
FascismFascism adopted policies such as promoting family
values, including promotion policies designed to reduce the number of
women in the workforce limiting the woman's role to that of a mother.
The fascists banned literature on birth control and increased
penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the
state.[127] Though
FascismFascism adopted a number of positions designed to
appeal to reactionaries, the Fascists sought to maintain Fascism's
revolutionary character, with
Angelo Oliviero Olivetti saying:
"
FascismFascism would like to be conservative, but it will [be] by being
revolutionary".[128] The Fascists supported revolutionary action and
committed to secure law and order to appeal to both conservatives and
syndicalists.[129]
Prior to Fascism's accommodation of the political right,
FascismFascism was a
small, urban, northern Italian movement that had about a thousand
members.[130] After Fascism's accommodation of the political right,
the Fascist movement's membership soared to approximately 250,000 by
1921.[131]
Fascist violence in 1922
Beginning in 1922, Fascist paramilitaries escalated their strategy
from one of attacking socialist offices and homes of socialist
leadership figures to one of violent occupation of cities. The
Fascists met little serious resistance from authorities and proceeded
to take over several northern Italian cities.[132] The Fascists
attacked the headquarters of socialist and Catholic labour unions in
Cremona and imposed forced
ItalianizationItalianization upon the German-speaking
population of Trent and Bolzano.[132] After seizing these cities, the
Fascists made plans to take Rome.[132]

A primarily political dictatorship....The Fascist Party itself had
become almost completely bureaucratized and subservient to, not
dominant over, the state itself. Big business, industry, and finance
retained extensive autonomy, particularly in the early years. The
armed forces also enjoyed considerable autonomy....The Fascist militia
was placed under military control....The judicial system was left
largely intact and relatively autonomous as well. The police continued
to be directed by state officials and were not taken over by party
leaders...nor was a major new police elite created....There was never
any question of bringing the Church under overall subservience....
Sizable sectors of Italian cultural life retained extensive autonomy,
and no major state propaganda-and-culture ministry existed....The
MussoliniMussolini regime was neither especially sanguinary nor particularly
repressive.[135]

MussoliniMussolini in power
Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy,
MussoliniMussolini had to form a
coalition government because the Fascists did not have control over
the Italian parliament.[136] Mussolini's coalition government
initially pursued economically liberal policies under the direction of
liberal finance minister Alberto De Stefani, a member of the Center
Party, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil
service.[136] Initially, little drastic change in government policy
had occurred and repressive police actions were limited.[136]
The Fascists began their attempt to entrench
FascismFascism in Italy with the
Acerbo Law, which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to
any party or coalition list in an election that received 25% or more
of the vote.[137] Through considerable Fascist violence and
intimidation, the list won a majority of the vote, allowing many seats
to go to the Fascists.[137] In the aftermath of the election, a crisis
and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party deputy Giacomo
Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist.[137] The liberals
and the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what
became known as the Aventine Secession.[138] On 3 January 1925,
MussoliniMussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and
declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but
insisted that he had done nothing wrong.
MussoliniMussolini proclaimed himself
dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility over the government
and announcing the dismissal of parliament.[138] From 1925 to 1929,
FascismFascism steadily became entrenched in power: opposition deputies were
denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced and a December
1925 decree made
MussoliniMussolini solely responsible to the King.[139]
Catholic Church
In 1929, the Fascist regime briefly gained what was in effect a
blessing of the Catholic Church after the regime signed a concordat
with the Church, known as the Lateran Treaty, which gave the papacy
state sovereignty and financial compensation for the seizure of Church
lands by the liberal state in the nineteenth century, but within two
years the Church had renounced
FascismFascism in the Encyclical Non Abbiamo
Bisogno as a "pagan idolotry of the state" which teaches "hatred,
violence and irreverence".[140] Not long after signing the agreement,
by Mussolini’s own confession the Church had threatened to have him
“excommunicated”, in part because of his intractable nature and
that he had "confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the
next three months than in the previous seven years”.[141] By the
late 1930s,
MussoliniMussolini became more vocal in his anti-clerical rhetoric,
repeatedly denouncing the Catholic Church and discussing ways to
depose the pope. He took the position that the “papacy was a
malignant tumor in the body of Italy and must 'be rooted out once and
for all,’ because there was no room in
RomeRome for both the Pope and
himself”.[142] In her 1974 book, Mussolini’s widow Rachele stated
that her husband had always been an atheist until near the end of his
life, writing that her husband was “basically irreligious until the
later years of his life”.[143]
The National Socialists of Germany employed similar anti-clerical
policies. The Gestapo confiscated hundreds of monasteries in Austria
and Germany, evicted clergymen and laymen alike and often replaced
crosses with a swastikas.[144] Referring to the swastika as the
“Devil’s Cross”, church leaders found their youth organizations
banned, their meetings limited and various Catholic periodicals
censored or banned. Government officials eventually found it necessary
to place “Nazis into editorial positions in the Catholic
press”.[145] Up to 2,720 clerics, mostly Catholics, were arrested by
the Gestapo and imprisoned inside of Germany’s Dachau concentration
camp, resulting in over 1,000 deaths[146]
Corporatist economic system
The Fascist regime created a corporatist economic system in 1925 with
creation of the Palazzo Vidioni Pact, in which the Italian employers'
association
ConfindustriaConfindustria and Fascist trade unions agreed to recognize
each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and
employees, excluding non-Fascist trade unions.[147] The Fascist regime
first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian
economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and
lock-outs and in 1927 created the Charter of Labour, which established
workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate
employer-employee disputes.[147] In practice, the sectoral
corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled
by the regime and employee organizations were rarely led by employees
themselves, but instead by appointed Fascist party members.[147]
Aggressive foreign policy
In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign policy that
included an attack on the Greek island of Corfu, aims to expand
Italian territory in the Balkans, plans to wage war against
TurkeyTurkey and
Yugoslavia, attempts to bring
YugoslaviaYugoslavia into civil war by supporting
Croat and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention
and making
AlbaniaAlbania a de facto protectorate of Italy, which was
achieved through diplomatic means by 1927.[148] In response to revolt
in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy abandoned previous
liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders.
Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races
and thereby had the right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it
sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya.[149] This
resulted in an aggressive military campaign known as the Pacification
of
LibyaLibya against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of
concentration camps and the forced starvation of thousands of
people.[149] Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by
forcibly expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of
Cyrenaica in Libya, from their settlements that was slated to be given
to Italian settlers.[150][151]
Hitler adopts Italian model

The
March on RomeMarch on Rome brought
FascismFascism international attention. One early
admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who less than a
month after the March had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party
upon
MussoliniMussolini and the Fascists.[152] The Nazis, led by Hitler and the
German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a "March on Berlin"
modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall
Putsch in
MunichMunich in November 1923.[153]
International impact of the
Great DepressionGreat Depression and the buildup to World
WarWar II

The conditions of economic hardship caused by the Great Depression
brought about an international surge of social unrest. According to
historian Philip Morgan, "the onset of the Great Depression...was the
greatest stimulus yet to the diffusion and expansion of fascism
outside Italy".[154] Fascist propaganda blamed the problems of the
long depression of the 1930s on minorities and scapegoats:
“Judeo-Masonic-bolshevik” conspiracies, left-wing internationalism
and the presence of immigrants.
In Germany, it contributed to the rise of the National Socialist
German Workers' Party, which resulted in the demise of the Weimar
Republic and the establishment of the fascist regime, Nazi Germany,
under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. With the rise of Hitler and the
Nazis to power in 1933, liberal democracy was dissolved in Germany and
the Nazis mobilized the country for war, with expansionist territorial
aims against several countries. In the 1930s, the Nazis implemented
racial laws that deliberately discriminated against, disenfranchised
and persecuted Jews and other racial and minority groups.
Fascist movements grew in strength elsewhere in Europe. Hungarian
fascist
Gyula GömbösGyula Gömbös rose to power as Prime Minister of
HungaryHungary in
1932 and attempted to entrench his Party of National Unity throughout
the country. He created an eight-hour work day, a forty-eight-hour
work week in industry and sought to entrench a corporatist economy;
and pursued irredentist claims on Hungary's neighbors.[155] The
fascist
Iron GuardIron Guard movement in
RomaniaRomania soared in political support
after 1933, gaining representation in the Romanian government and an
Iron GuardIron Guard member assassinated Romanian prime minister Ion Duca.[156]
During the 6 February 1934 crisis,
FranceFrance faced the greatest domestic
political turmoil since the
Dreyfus AffairDreyfus Affair when the fascist Francist
Movement and multiple far-right movements rioted en masse in Paris
against the French government resulting in major political
violence.[157] A variety of para-fascist governments that borrowed
elements from fascism were formed during the Great Depression,
including those of Greece, Lithuania,
PolandPoland and Yugoslavia.[158]

Integralists marching in Brazil

In the Americas, the Brazilian Integralists led by Plínio Salgado
claimed as many as 200,000 members although following coup attempts it
faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of
Getúlio VargasGetúlio Vargas in
1937.[159] In the 1930s, the National Socialist Movement of Chile
gained seats in Chile's parliament and attempted a coup d'état that
resulted in the
Seguro Obrero massacreSeguro Obrero massacre of 1938.[160]
During the Great Depression,
MussoliniMussolini promoted active state
intervention in the economy. He denounced the contemporary
"supercapitalism" that he claimed began in 1914 as a failure because
of its alleged decadence, its support for unlimited consumerism and
its intention to create the "standardization of humankind".[161]
Fascist Italy created the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction
(IRI), a giant state-owned firm and holding company that provided
state funding to failing private enterprises.[162] The IRI was made a
permanent institution in Fascist Italy in 1937, pursued Fascist
policies to create national autarky and had the power to take over
private firms to maximize war production.[162] While Hitler’s regime
only nationalized 500 companies in key industries by the early
1940s,[163]
MussoliniMussolini declared in 1934 that “[t]hree-fourths of
Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the
state”.[164] Due to the worldwide depression, Mussolini’s
government was able to take over most of Italy’s largest failing
banks, who held controlling interest in many Italian businesses. The
Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, a state-operated holding
company in charge of bankrupt banks and companies, reported in early
1934 that they held assets of “48.5 percent of the share capital of
Italy”, which later included the capital of the banks
themselves.[165] Political historian Martin Blinkhorn estimated
Italy’s scope of state intervention and ownership “greatly
surpassed that in Nazi Germany, giving Italy a public sector second
only to that of Stalin’s Russia”.[166] In the late 1930s, Italy
enacted manufacturing cartels, tariff barriers, currency restrictions
and massive regulation of the economy to attempt to balance
payments.[167] Italy's policy of autarky failed to achieve effective
economic autonomy.[167]
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany similarly pursued an economic
agenda with the aims of autarky and rearmament and imposed
protectionist policies, including forcing the German steel industry to
use lower-quality German iron ore rather than superior-quality
imported iron.[168]
World War IIWorld War II (1939–1945)
In Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, both
MussoliniMussolini and Hitler pursued
territorial expansionist and interventionist foreign policy agendas
from the 1930s through the 1940s culminating in World
WarWar II.
MussoliniMussolini called for irredentist Italian claims to be reclaimed,
establishing Italian domination of the
Mediterranean SeaMediterranean Sea and securing
Italian access to the
Atlantic OceanAtlantic Ocean and the creation of Italian
spazio vitale ("vital space") in the Mediterranean and Red Sea
regions.[169] Hitler called for irredentist German claims to be
reclaimed along with the creation of German
LebensraumLebensraum ("living
space") in Eastern Europe, including territories held by the Soviet
Union, that would be colonized by Germans.[170]

Emaciated male inmate at the Italian Rab concentration camp

From 1935 to 1939, Germany and Italy escalated their demands for
territorial claims and greater influence in world affairs. Italy
invaded
EthiopiaEthiopia in 1935 resulting in its condemnation by the League
of Nations and its widespread diplomatic isolation. In 1936, Germany
remilitarized the industrial Rhineland, a region that had been ordered
demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938, Germany annexed
AustriaAustria and Italy assisted Germany in resolving the diplomatic crisis
between Germany versus Britain and
FranceFrance over claims on
CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia by arranging the
MunichMunich Agreement that gave Germany the
SudetenlandSudetenland and was perceived at the time to have averted a European
war. These hopes faded when Hitler violated the
MunichMunich Agreement by
ordering the invasion and partition of
CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia between Germany
and a client state of
SlovakiaSlovakia in 1939. At the same time from 1938 to
1939, Italy was demanding territorial and colonial concessions from
FranceFrance and Britain.[171] In 1939, Germany prepared for war with
Poland, but attempted to gain territorial concessions from Poland
through diplomatic means.[172] The Polish government did not trust
Hitler's promises and refused to accept Germany's demands.[172]
The invasion of
PolandPoland by Germany was deemed unacceptable by Britain,
FranceFrance and their allies, resulting in their mutual declaration of war
against Germany that was deemed the aggressor in the war in Poland,
resulting in the outbreak of World
WarWar II. In 1940,
MussoliniMussolini led
Italy into
World War IIWorld War II on the side of the Axis.
MussoliniMussolini was aware
that Italy did not have the military capacity to carry out a long war
with
FranceFrance or the United Kingdom and waited until
FranceFrance was on the
verge of imminent collapse and surrender from the German invasion
before declaring war on
FranceFrance and the United Kingdom on 10 June 1940
on the assumption that the war would be short-lived following France's
collapse.[173]
MussoliniMussolini believed that following a brief entry of
Italy into war with France, followed by the imminent French surrender,
Italy could gain some territorial concessions from
FranceFrance and then
concentrate its forces on a major offensive in
EgyptEgypt where British and
Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces.[174] Plans by
Germany to invade the United Kingdom in 1940 failed after Germany lost
the aerial warfare campaign in the Battle of Britain. In 1941, the
Axis campaign spread to the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union after Hitler launched
Operation Barbarossa. Axis forces at the height of their power
controlled almost all of continental Europe. The war became
prolonged—contrary to Mussolini's plans—resulting in Italy losing
battles on multiple fronts and requiring German assistance.

Corpses of victims of the German Buchenwald concentration camp

During World
WarWar II, the
Axis PowersAxis Powers in Europe led by Nazi Germany
participated in the extermination of millions of Poles, Jews, Gypsies
and others in the genocide known as the Holocaust.
After 1942, Axis forces began to falter. In 1943, after Italy faced
multiple military failures, the complete reliance and subordination of
Italy to Germany, the Allied invasion of Italy and the corresponding
international humiliation,
MussoliniMussolini was removed as head of government
and arrested on the order of King Victor Emmanuel III, who proceeded
to dismantle the Fascist state and declared Italy's switching of
allegiance to the Allied side.
MussoliniMussolini was rescued from arrest by
German forces and led the German client state, the Italian Social
Republic from 1943 to 1945.
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany faced multiple losses and
steady Soviet and Western Allied offensives from 1943 to 1945.
On 28 April 1945,
MussoliniMussolini was captured and executed by Italian
communist partisans. On 30 April 1945, Hitler committed suicide.
Shortly afterwards, Germany surrendered and the Nazi regime was
systematically dismantled by the occupying Allied powers. An
International Military Tribunal was subsequently convened in
Nuremberg. Beginning in November 1945 and lasting through 1949,
numerous Nazi political, military and economic leaders were tried and
convicted of war crimes, with many of the worst offenders receiving
the death penalty.
Post–
World War IIWorld War II (1945–present)
Main article: Neo-fascism

The victory of the Allies over the
Axis powersAxis powers in
World War IIWorld War II led to
the collapse of many fascist regimes in Europe. The Nuremberg Trials
convicted several Nazi leaders of crimes against humanity involving
the Holocaust. However, there remained several movements and
governments that were ideologically related to fascism.
Francisco Franco's Falangist one-party state in Spain was officially
neutral during
World War IIWorld War II and it survived the collapse of the Axis
Powers. Franco's rise to power had been directly assisted by the
militaries of Fascist Italy and
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany during the Spanish Civil
WarWar and Franco had sent volunteers to fight on the side of Nazi
Germany against the
Soviet UnionSoviet Union during World
WarWar II. The first years
were characterized by a repression against the anti-fascist
ideologies, a deep censorship and the suppression of democratic
institutions (elected Parliament, Constitution of 1931, Regional
Statutes of Autonomy) . After
World War IIWorld War II and a period of
international isolation, Franco's regime normalized relations with the
Western powers during the Cold War, until Franco's death in 1975 and
the transformation of Spain into a liberal democracy.

Historian
Robert Paxton observes that one of the main problems in
defining fascism is that it was widely mimicked. Paxton says: "In
fascism's heyday, in the 1930s, many regimes that were not
functionally fascist borrowed elements of fascist decor in order to
lend themselves an aura of force, vitality, and mass mobilization". He
goes on to observe that Salazar "crushed Portuguese fascism after he
had copied some of its techniques of popular mobilization".[175]
PortugalPortugal was under the control of the Estado Novo, a dictatorship led
by António de Oliveira Salazar. In Argentina, Peronism, associated
with the regime of
Juan PerónJuan Perón from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974, was
influenced by fascism.[176] Between 1939 and 1941, prior to his rise
to power, Perón had developed a deep admiration of Italian Fascism
and modelled his economic policies on Italian Fascist policies.[176]
The term neo-fascism refers to fascist movements after World
WarWar II.
In Italy, the
Italian Social MovementItalian Social Movement led by
Giorgio Almirante was a
major neo-fascist movement that transformed itself into a
self-described "post-fascist" movement called the National Alliance
(AN), which has been an ally of Silvio Berlusconi's
Forza ItaliaForza Italia for a
decade. In 2008, AN joined
Forza ItaliaForza Italia in Berlusconi's new party The
People of Freedom, but in 2012 a group of politicians split from The
People of Freedom, refounding the party with the name Brothers of
Italy. In Germany, various neo-Nazi movements have been formed and
banned in accordance with Germany's constitutional law which forbids
Nazism. The
National Democratic Party of GermanyNational Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) is widely
considered a neo-Nazi party, although the party does not publicly
identify itself as such.

After the onset of the
Great RecessionGreat Recession and economic crisis in Greece,
a movement known as the Golden Dawn, widely considered a neo-Nazi
party, soared in support out of obscurity and won seats in Greece's
parliament, espousing a staunch hostility towards minorities, illegal
immigrants and refugees. In 2013, after the murder of an anti-fascist
musician by a person with links to Golden Dawn, the Greek government
ordered the arrest of Golden Dawn's leader
Nikolaos Michaloliakos and
other Golden Dawn members on charges related to being associated with
a criminal organization.
Tenets
Nationalism

Ultranationalism combined with the myth of national rebirth is a key
foundation of fascism.[177] Dylan Riley argues that in Italy in the
early 1920s:

Neither organized socialism nor the Italian liberals championed the
democratic demands of the left nationalists.
FascismFascism stepped into this
vacuum, constituting itself as an antisocialist and antiliberal civil
society movement. It was the failure of this counterhegemonic movement
that would lead to the fascist seizure of power. Veterans'
organizations are the clearest manifestation of civic mobilization in
postwar Italy.[178]

The fascist view of a nation is of a single organic entity that binds
people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of
people.[179]
FascismFascism seeks to solve economic, political and social
problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the
nation or race above all else and promoting cults of unity, strength
and purity.[38][180][181][182][183] European fascist movements
typically espouse a racist conception of non-Europeans being inferior
to Europeans.[184] Beyond this, fascists in Europe have not held a
unified set of racial views.[184] Historically, most fascists promoted
imperialism, although there have been several fascist movements that
were uninterested in the pursuit of new imperial ambitions.[184]
Totalitarianism
FascismFascism promotes the establishment of a totalitarian state.[185] It
opposes liberal democracy, rejects multi-party systems and supports a
one-party state.
The Doctrine of FascismThe Doctrine of Fascism states: "The Fascist
conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or
spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood,
FascismFascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a
unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates
the whole life of a people".[186] In The Legal Basis of the Total
State, Nazi political theorist
Carl SchmittCarl Schmitt described the Nazi
intention to form a "strong state which guarantees a totality of
political unity transcending all diversity" in order to avoid a
"disastrous pluralism tearing the German people apart".[187]
Fascist states pursued policies of social indoctrination through
propaganda in education and the media and regulation of the production
of educational and media materials.[188][189] Education was designed
to glorify the fascist movement and inform students of its historical
and political importance to the nation. It attempted to purge ideas
that were not consistent with the beliefs of the fascist movement and
to teach students to be obedient to the state.[190]
Economy
Main article: Economics of fascism
FascismFascism presented itself as a third position,[when?] alternative to
both international socialism and free market capitalism.[191] While
fascism opposed mainstream socialism, it sometimes regarded itself as
a type of nationalist "socialism" to highlight their commitment to
national solidarity and unity.[192][193] Fascists opposed
international free market capitalism, but supported a type of
productive capitalism.[194][110]
Fascist governments advocated resolution of domestic class conflict
within a nation in order to secure national solidarity.[195] This
would be done through the state mediating relations between the
classes (contrary to the views of classical liberal-inspired
capitalists).[196] While fascism was opposed to domestic class
conflict, it was held that bourgeois-proletarian conflict existed
primarily in national conflict between proletarian nations versus
bourgeois nations.[197]
FascismFascism condemned what it viewed as widespread
character traits that it associated as the typical bourgeois mentality
that it opposed, such as materialism, crassness, cowardice, inability
to comprehend the heroic ideal of the fascist "warrior"; and
associations with liberalism, individualism and
parliamentarianism.[198] In 1918,
MussoliniMussolini defined what he viewed as
the proletarian character, defining proletarian as being one and the
same with producers, a productivist perspective that associated all
people deemed productive, including entrepreneurs, technicians,
workers and soldiers as being proletarian.[199] He acknowledged the
historical existence of both bourgeois and proletarian producers, but
declared the need for bourgeois producers to merge with proletarian
producers.[199]
While fascism denounced the mainstream internationalist and Marxist
socialisms, it claimed to economically represent a type of nationalist
productivist socialism that while condemning parasitical capitalism,
it was willing to accommodate productivist capitalism within it.[194]
This was derived from Henri de Saint Simon, whose ideas inspired the
creation of utopian socialism and influenced other ideologies, that
stressed solidarity rather than class war and whose conception of
productive people in the economy included both productive workers and
productive bosses to challenge the influence of the aristocracy and
unproductive financial speculators.[200] Saint Simon's vision combined
the traditionalist right-wing criticisms of the French Revolution
combined with a left-wing belief in the need for association or
collaboration of productive people in society.[200] Whereas Marxism
condemned capitalism as a system of exploitative property relations,
fascism saw the nature of the control of credit and money in the
contemporary capitalist system as abusive.[194] Unlike Marxism,
fascism did not see class conflict between the Marxist-defined
proletariat and the bourgeoisie as a given or as an engine of
historical materialism.[194] Instead, it viewed workers and productive
capitalists in common as productive people who were in conflict with
parasitic elements in society including: corrupt political parties,
corrupt financial capital and feeble people.[194] Fascist leaders such
as
MussoliniMussolini and Hitler spoke of the need to create a new managerial
elite led by engineers and captains of industry—but free from the
parasitic leadership of industries.[194] Hitler stated that the Nazi
Party supported bodenständigen Kapitalismus ("productive capitalism")
that was based upon profit earned from one's own labour, but condemned
unproductive capitalism or loan capitalism, which derived profit from
speculation.[201]
Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that accepted a
mix of private and public ownership over the means of production.[202]
Economic planning was applied to both the public and private sector
and the prosperity of private enterprise depended on its acceptance of
synchronizing itself with the economic goals of the state.[203]
Fascist economic ideology supported the profit motive, but emphasized
that industries must uphold the national interest as superior to
private profit.[203]
While fascism accepted the importance of material wealth and power, it
condemned materialism which identified as being present in both
communism and capitalism and criticized materialism for lacking
acknowledgement of the role of the spirit.[204] In particular,
fascists criticized capitalism not because of its competitive nature
nor support of private property, which fascists supported—but due to
its materialism, individualism, alleged bourgeois decadence and
alleged indifference to the nation.[205]
FascismFascism denounced
MarxismMarxism for
its advocacy of materialist internationalist class identity, which
fascists regarded as an attack upon the emotional and spiritual bonds
of the nation and a threat to the achievement of genuine national
solidarity.[206]
Economic self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most
fascist governments.[207]
In discussing the spread of fascism beyond Italy, historian Philip
Morgan states:

Since the Depression was a crisis of laissez-faire capitalism and its
political counterpart, parliamentary democracy, fascism could pose as
the 'third-way' alternative between capitalism and Bolshevism, the
model of a new European 'civilization'. As
MussoliniMussolini typically put it
in early 1934, "from 1929...fascism has become a universal
phenomenon... The dominant forces of the 19th century, democracy,
socialism, liberalism have been exhausted...the new political and
economic forms of the twentieth-century are fascist'(
MussoliniMussolini 1935:
32).[154]

Fascists promoted social welfare to ameliorate economic conditions
affecting their nation or race as a whole, but they did not support
social welfare for egalitarian reasons towards those not considered
racially embodied with pure German blood. Under an extensive welfare
system, over 17 million Germans obtain assistance under the control of
National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) by 1939, an agency that had
“projected a powerful image of caring and support”.[208] The NSV
had grown to the second largest Nazi group organization by 1939,
dwarfed only by the German Labor Front. The NSV and its Winter Aid and
Strength Through JoyStrength Through Joy provided evidence to the German citizenry that
the National Socialists were keeping their promise to create “an
organic national community” where “class conflict and social
antagonisms would be overcome” and the “egoism of the
individual” would instead surrender to the “overriding interests
of the whole”.[209] These programs were designed to “obliterate
distinctions of class and status” and enhance the lives of the
ordinary people.[209] Fascists criticized egalitarianism as preserving
the weak and they instead promoted social Darwinist views.[210][211]
Action
FascismFascism emphasizes direct action, including supporting the legitimacy
of political violence, as a core part of its politics.[15][212]
FascismFascism views violent action as a necessity in politics that fascism
identifies as being an "endless struggle".[213] This emphasis on the
use of political violence means that most fascist parties have also
created their own private militias (e.g. the Nazi Party's Brown shirts
and Fascist Italy's Blackshirts).
The basis of fascism's support of violent action in politics is
connected to social Darwinism.[213] Fascist movements have commonly
held social Darwinist views of nations, races and societies.[214] They
say that nations and races must purge themselves of socially and
biologically weak or degenerate people, while simultaneously promoting
the creation of strong people, in order to survive in a world defined
by perpetual national and racial conflict.[215]
Age and gender roles

Members of the League of German Girls, an organization for girls
within the
Nazi PartyNazi Party in Germany

FascismFascism emphasizes youth both in a physical sense of age and in a
spiritual sense as related to virility and commitment to action.[216]
The Italian Fascists' political anthem was called
GiovinezzaGiovinezza ("The
Youth").[216]
FascismFascism identifies the physical age period of youth as a
critical time for the moral development of people who will affect
society.[217]
Italian FascismItalian Fascism pursued what it called "moral hygiene" of youth,
particularly regarding sexuality.[218] Fascist Italy promoted what it
considered normal sexual behaviour in youth while denouncing what it
considered deviant sexual behaviour.[218] It condemned pornography,
most forms of birth control and contraceptive devices (with the
exception of the condom), homosexuality and prostitution as deviant
sexual behaviour, although enforcement of laws opposed to such
practices was erratic and authorities often turned a blind eye.[218]
Fascist Italy regarded the promotion of male sexual excitation before
puberty as the cause of criminality amongst male youth, declared
homosexuality a social disease and pursued an aggressive campaign to
reduce prostitution of young women.[218]
MussoliniMussolini perceived women's primary role as primarily child bearers
and men, warriors—once saying: "
WarWar is to man what maternity is to
the woman".[219] In an effort to increase birthrates, the Italian
Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised large
families and initiated policies intended to reduce the number of women
employed.[220]
Italian FascismItalian Fascism called for women to be honoured as
"reproducers of the nation" and the Italian Fascist government held
ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian
nation.[221] In 1934,
MussoliniMussolini declared that employment of women was
a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for
women, working was "incompatible with childbearing".
MussoliniMussolini went on
to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of
women from the work force".[222]
The German Nazi government strongly encouraged women to stay at home
to bear children and keep house.[223] This policy was reinforced by
bestowing the
Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing
four or more children. The unemployment rate was cut substantially,
mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men
could take their jobs. Nazi propaganda sometimes promoted premarital
and extramarital sexual relations, unwed motherhood and divorce, but
at other times the Nazis opposed such behaviour.[224]
The Nazis decriminalized abortion in cases where fetuses had
hereditary defects or were of a race the government disapproved of,
while the abortion of healthy pure German, Aryan fetuses remained
strictly forbidden.[225] For non-Aryans, abortion was often
compulsory. Their eugenics program also stemmed from the "progressive
biomedical model" of Weimar Germany.[226] In 1935, Nazi Germany
expanded the legality of abortion by amending its eugenics law, to
promote abortion for women with hereditary disorders.[225] The law
allowed abortion if a woman gave her permission and the fetus was not
yet viable[227][228] and for purposes of so-called racial
hygiene.[229][230]
The Nazis said that homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate,
perverted and undermined masculinity because it did not produce
children.[231] They considered homosexuality curable through therapy,
citing modern scientism and the study of sexology, which said that
homosexuality could be felt by "normal" people and not just an
abnormal minority.[232] Open homosexuals were interned in Nazi
concentration camps.[233]
Palingenesis and modernism
FascismFascism emphasizes both palingenesis and modernism.[234] In
particular, fascism's nationalism has been identified as having a
palingenetic character.[177]
FascismFascism promotes the regeneration of the
nation and purging it of decadence.[234]
FascismFascism accepts forms of
modernism that it deems promotes national regeneration while rejecting
forms of modernism that are regarded as antithetical to national
regeneration.[235]
FascismFascism aestheticized modern technology and its
association with speed, power and violence.[236]
FascismFascism admired
advances in the economy in the early 20th century, particularly
FordismFordism and scientific management.[237] Fascist modernism has been
recognized as inspired or developed by various figures—such as
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn,
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Knut Hamsun,
Ezra PoundEzra Pound and Wyndham
Lewis.[238]
In Italy, such modernist influence was exemplified by Marinetti who
advocated a palingenetic modernist society that condemned
liberal-bourgeois values of tradition and psychology, while promoting
a technological-martial religion of national renewal that emphasized
militant nationalism.[239] In Germany, it was exemplified by Jünger
who was influenced by his observation of the technological warfare
during
World War IWorld War I and claimed that a new social class had been
created that he described as the "warrior-worker".[240] Jünger like
Marinetti emphasized the revolutionary capacities of technology and
emphasized an "organic construction" between human and machine as a
liberating and regenerative force in that challenged liberal
democracy, conceptions of individual autonomy, bourgeois nihilism and
decadence.[240] He conceived of a society based on a totalitarian
concept of "total mobilization" of such disciplined
warrior-workers.[240]
Criticism of fascism
FascismFascism has been widely criticized and condemned in modern times since
the defeat of the
Axis PowersAxis Powers in World
WarWar II.
Anti-democratic and tyrannical
Further information: Anti-democratic thought

One of the most common and strongest criticisms of fascism is that it
is a tyranny.[241]
FascismFascism is deliberately and entirely non-democratic
and anti-democratic.[242][243][244]
Unprincipled opportunism
Some critics of Italian fascism have said that much of the ideology
was merely a by-product of unprincipled opportunism by
MussoliniMussolini and
that he changed his political stances merely to bolster his personal
ambitions while he disguised them as being purposeful to the
public.[245] Richard Washburn Child, the American ambassador to Italy
who worked with
MussoliniMussolini and became his friend and admirer, defended
Mussolini's opportunistic behaviour by writing: "Opportunist is a term
of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves to conditions for the
reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have learned to know him, is
an opportunist in the sense that he believed that mankind itself must
be fitted to changing conditions rather than to fixed theories, no
matter how many hopes and prayers have been expended on theories and
programmes".[246] Child quoted
MussoliniMussolini as saying: "The sanctity of
an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity beyond its power to do,
to work, to succeed in practice. It may have succeeded yesterday and
fail to-morrow. Failed yesterday and succeed to-morrow. The machine
first of all must run!".[246]
Some have criticized Mussolini's actions during the outbreak of World
WarWar I as opportunist for seeming to suddenly abandon Marxist
egalitarian internationalism for non-egalitarian nationalism and note
to that effect that upon
MussoliniMussolini endorsing Italy's intervention in
the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, he and the new fascist
movement received financial support from foreign sources, such as
Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies[247] as well as the
British Security Service MI5.[248] Some, including Mussolini's
socialist opponents at the time, have noted that regardless of the
financial support he accepted for his pro-interventionist stance,
MussoliniMussolini was free to write whatever he wished in his newspaper Il
Popolo d'Italia without prior sanctioning from his financial
backers.[249] Furthermore, the major source of financial support that
MussoliniMussolini and the fascist movement received in
World War IWorld War I was from
FranceFrance and is widely believed to have been French socialists who
supported the French government's war against Germany and who sent
support to Italian socialists who wanted Italian intervention on
France's side.[250]
Mussolini's transformation away from
MarxismMarxism into what eventually
became fascism began prior to World
WarWar I, as
MussoliniMussolini had grown
increasingly pessimistic about
MarxismMarxism and egalitarianism while
becoming increasingly supportive of figures who opposed
egalitarianism, such as Friedrich Nietzsche.[251] By 1902, Mussolini
was studying Georges Sorel, Nietzsche and Vilfredo Pareto.[252]
Sorel's emphasis on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal
democracy and capitalism by the use of violence, direct action,
general strikes and neo-Machiavellian appeals to emotion impressed
MussoliniMussolini deeply.[253] Mussolini's use of Nietzsche made him a highly
unorthodox socialist, due to Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and
anti-egalitarian views.[251] Prior to World
WarWar I, Mussolini's
writings over time indicated that he had abandoned the
MarxismMarxism and
egalitarianism that he had previously supported in favour of
Nietzsche's übermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism.[251] In 1908,
MussoliniMussolini wrote a short essay called "Philosophy of Strength" based on
his Nietzschean influence, in which
MussoliniMussolini openly spoke fondly of
the ramifications of an impending war in Europe in challenging both
religion and nihilism: "[A] new kind of free spirit will come,
strengthened by the war, ... a spirit equipped with a kind of sublime
perversity, ... a new free spirit will triumph over God and over
Nothing".[101]
Ideological dishonesty
FascismFascism has been criticized for being ideologically dishonest. Major
examples of ideological dishonesty have been identified in Italian
fascism's changing relationship with German Nazism.[254][255] Fascist
Italy's official foreign policy positions were known to commonly
utilize rhetorical ideological hyperbole to justify its actions,
although during Dino Grandi's tenure as Italy's foreign minister the
country engaged in realpolitik free of such fascist hyperbole.[256]
Italian fascism's stance towards German
NazismNazism fluctuated from support
from the late 1920s to 1934, when it celebrated Hitler's rise to power
and meeting with Hitler in 1934; to opposition from 1934 to 1936 after
the assassination of Italy's allied leader in Austria, Engelbert
Dollfuss, by Austrian Nazis; and again back to support after 1936,
when Germany was the only significant power that did not denounce
Italy's invasion and occupation of Ethiopia.
After antagonism exploded between
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and Fascist Italy over
the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934, Mussolini
and Italian fascists denounced and ridiculed Nazism's racial theories,
particularly by denouncing its Nordicism, while promoting
Mediterraneanism.[255]
MussoliniMussolini himself responded to Nordicists'
claims of Italy being divided into Nordic and Mediterranean racial
areas due to Germanic invasions of Northern Italy by claiming that
while Germanic tribes such as the
LombardsLombards took control of Italy after
the fall of Ancient Rome, they arrived in small numbers (about 8,000)
and quickly assimilated into Roman culture and spoke the Latin
language within fifty years.[257] Italian fascism was influenced by
the tradition of Italian nationalists scornfully looking down upon
Nordicists' claims and taking pride in comparing the age and
sophistication of ancient Roman civilization as well as the classical
revival in the
RenaissanceRenaissance to that of Nordic societies that Italian
nationalists described as "newcomers" to civilization in
comparison.[254] At the height of antagonism between the Nazis and
Italian fascists over race,
MussoliniMussolini claimed that the Germans
themselves were not a pure race and noted with irony that the Nazi
theory of German racial superiority was based on the theories of
non-German foreigners, such as Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau.[258]
After the tension in German-Italian relations diminished during the
late 1930s, Italian fascism sought to harmonize its ideology with
German
NazismNazism and combined Nordicist and Mediterranean racial
theories, noting that Italians were members of the Aryan Race,
composed of a mixed Nordic-Mediterranean subtype.[255]
In 1938,
MussoliniMussolini declared upon Italy's adoption of antisemitic laws
that Italian fascism had always been antisemitic,[255] In fact,
Italian fascism did not endorse antisemitism until the late 1930s when
MussoliniMussolini feared alienating antisemitic Nazi Germany, whose power and
influence were growing in Europe. Prior to that period there had been
notable Jewish Italians who had been senior Italian fascist officials,
including Margherita Sarfatti, who had also been Mussolini's
mistress.[255] Also contrary to Mussolini's claim in 1938, only a
small number of Italian fascists were staunchly antisemitic (such as
Roberto FarinacciRoberto Farinacci and Giuseppe Preziosi), while others such as Italo
Balbo, who came from
FerraraFerrara which had one of Italy's largest Jewish
communities, were disgusted by the antisemitic laws and opposed
them.[255]
FascismFascism scholar Mark Neocleous notes that while Italian
fascism did not have a clear commitment to antisemitism, there were
occasional antisemitic statements issued prior to 1938, such as
MussoliniMussolini in 1919 declaring that the Jewish bankers in London and New
York were connected by race to the Russian Bolsheviks and that eight
percent of the Russian Bolsheviks were Jews.[259]
See also

Ailtirí na hAiséirghe
Black Front (Netherlands)
Blueshirts
Breton Social-National Workers' Movement
British Fascists
British People's Party (1939)
British Union of Fascists
La Cagoule
Clerical People's Party
Faisceau
Flemish National Union
French Popular Party
General Dutch Fascist League
Imperial Fascist League
Lapua Movement
Nasjonal Samling
National Corporate PartyNational Corporate Party (Greenshirts)
National Fascisti
Nationalist Party (Iceland)
National Socialist Bloc
National Socialist Dutch Workers Party
National Socialist League
National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands
National Socialist Movement of Norway
National Socialist Workers' Party (Sweden)
New Party (UK)
Patriotic People's Movement (Finland)
Pērkonkrusts
Rexism

Central Europe

Arrow Cross Party
Austrian National Socialism
Fatherland Front (Austria)
Hungarian National Socialist Party
National Front (Switzerland)
Nazism
Nazi Party
Sudeten German Party

Southern Europe

Albanian Fascist Party
Democratic Fascist Party
Falange
Greek National Socialist Party
Italian Fascism
Italian Social Republic
Metaxism
National Fascist Party
National Union (Portugal)
Republican Fascist Party
Sammarinese Fascist Party
Ustaše
ZBOR

Eastern and Southeastern Europe

Bulgarian National Socialist Workers Party
Crusade of Romanianism
Iron Guard
National Fascist Community
National Fascist Movement
National Italo-Romanian Cultural and Economic Movement
National Social Movement (Bulgaria)
National Radical Camp Falanga
National Romanian Fascio
National
RenaissanceRenaissance Front
RatniksRatniks (Bulgaria)
Romanian Front
Russian Fascist Party
Russian Women's Fascist Movement
Slovak People's Party
Union of Bulgarian National Legions
Vlajka

March of the Iron Will
German federal election, November 1932
German federal election, March 1933
Enabling Act
6 February 1934 crisis
1934 Montreux Fascist conference
Spanish Civil War
4th of August Regime
Anti-Comintern Pact

1940s

World
WarWar II
The Holocaust
End in Italy
Denazification
Nuremberg Trials